MIKE ASHLEY’S changed his tune.

MPs investigating accusations of shocking working practices at his Sports Direct high street chain are “pushing against an open door,” so keen is he to co-operate, he simpers.

But only last week he was claiming he would not bother answering to the business select committee, whose worries about his firm he has previously dismissed as “showboating” and “a joke.”

It took talk of holding him in contempt of Parliament to drag him to Westminster.

And he continued to claim the staff horror stories seeping from the company’s every pore were part of a campaign of “public vilification” even while Sports Direct’s internal review rumbled on — a review he now acknowledges has raised “some issues” about the way the firm treats its employees, notably “bottlenecks at security.”

These bottlenecks — whereby staff faced humiliating searches when leaving work on the charming grounds that every worker is a potential thief — led to the company breaking the law because nobody was paid for the time they waited to be searched — leading to take-home pay falling beneath the minimum wage, something Ashley now admits.

But evidence gathered by the Unite union suggests this is just one of the repressive methods that critics say make Sports Direct more akin to a prison camp than a healthy workplace.

It appears workers can be docked pay for arriving just one minute late — while being denied overtime when they put in extra hours.

The system described by Unite, where members of staff could receive “strikes” — for taking a day off sick or leaving early due to illness, “excessive chatting” or spending too long on the loo — and would be fired if they notched up six strikes sounds like something from the Victorian era.

And the result was a culture of fear so intimidating that staff forced themselves into work when in no state to do so, putting others at risk of infection.

The atmosphere was terrifying that a woman gave birth in a company toilet rather than risk taking a day off that might see her chucked on the dole.

It’s not yet clear whether the shocking number of ambulance call-outs to Sports Direct’s Shirebrook warehouse — almost half for life-threatening cases — is down to dreadful health and safety standards, people at death’s door dragging themselves into work for fear of the consequences or both. But neither reflects well on the company.

Ashley was quite the sycophant yesterday.

He admitted that employing four-fifths of the workforce on zero-hours contracts was inappropriate.

He admitted the company’s pay policies were “unacceptable.”

He admitted that there were “sexual predators” among the company’s management who needed to be “dealt with.”

He even conceded that the company was too big for him to handle, though that wasn’t accompanied by an offer to hand the reins over to someone else.

But the billionaire’s claim that despite this catalogue of crimes Sports Direct is able to protect its workers more effectively than the Unite union shows he hasn’t learned a thing.

If his professed shock at what’s been happening under his nose was genuine he would stop sneering at the unions and start working with them.

It remains a fact that an organised workplace is a healthier workplace, a safer workplace, a happier workplace and a better paid one too.

It’s never a good idea to expect management to treat working people well out of the kindness of its heart.

Our interests are not the same as theirs. Which is why we need unions to stand up for us.

The lesson of the Shirebrook depot is simple. Don’t mourn — organise.